Delayed Reaction: Shirkers

The Pitch: It's a documentary but it's about the making of a movie, but the movie was never released.

The story of the making of and rediscovery of an infamous independent movie made in Singapore in the early 1990s.

I imagine this documentary plays much different if you don't know what it's about going in. For the first hour or so, it's a pretty straight-forward "making of" documentary. Sandi Tan talks about her and her friends' love of film growing up. She talks about the fledgling independent film industry in Singapore in the early 90s. She covers how they made this movie and the assorted hurdles they had making it. There is a haunted quality to all this. When they show clips of the movie, it's like watching old super 8 home videos.

Then, there are a series of third act twists. Goerges Cardona runs off with the film. Everyone accepts that it's lost forever until Cardona's ex-wife calls 20 years later to inform Sandi that she has the movie, and it's still in perfect condition. And, the final dagger: there is no sound. Only the video remains. And suddenly, the entire style of the movie makes perfect sense.

While this series of revelations makes the whole story more exciting, researching Cardona's life is a bit of a dead end. The movie itself admits this. I wonder how much more they could've uncovered with more resources, or was it something where the filmmaker had already devoted too much of her life to it and needed to be done with it? I definitely get the sense that some of the filmmaker's friends are tired of talking about it. And you get the sense that Sandi Tan is the most persnickety person in the extended group of friends. She tries to call attention to some of her own faults, but I'm always quite aware how much I'm seeing the story through her lens.

Still, it's a really interesting story. Between this and Crazy Rich Asians, I feel like 2018 offered a crash course in "What is Singapore?". The story of film history in this other country is fascinating.

One thing did bug me throughout though. I still don't get how infamous this original Shirkers that they made in 1992 was. Sandi Tan talks about it following her and that she'd been offered to write a book about the production. But, the movie just looked like a decently funded student film; not that different from a lot of movies USC students would've made at the time. Sure, it's notable since it was completely independent and filmed in Singapore. I feel like this documentary made Shirkers as humble or impressive as it needed to be in a given moment. Maybe I needed more reminders of how unique the project was at the time, or a follow-up of how the indie film industry developed in Singapore after that would've been nice. 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend